Thanks, Chair.
Thank you very much for being here, everyone. Merci d'être ici aujourd'hui.
And thank you for coming in by camera; you look good on TV.
I want to explore a couple of themes that I think cut across all three of your briefs and your comments today. I take from a lot of what you said here today that SARA isn't working. It's not working. I think that's conclusion number one.
Number two, I take from all three of your briefs--you've all said this explicitly or implicitly--that there's a real opportunity for federal leadership through a national approach to conservation and species at risk.
I also see frustration with the fact that in the last several years you've seen all kinds of processes undertaken that haven't made a dent, whether it's the references to previous recommendations or past reviews of SARA by Stratos, the minister's round table in 2006, the non-advertised minister's round table of 2008, or the commissioner's report for 2008.
I want to ask you how important it might be for a federal government to convene a very serious first ministers meeting on species at risk. We've already called on the government, for example, within 90 days of the motion that was passed in the House on climate change recently. We asked the Prime Minister to call together a first ministers meeting to deal with the issues of climate change and the crisis in energy. We haven't heard back from the government, but on this file, given the federal-provincial differences, some of the very creative mechanisms that have been designed in the United States using ecological fiscal reform are fiscal measures that can help us achieve good habitat protection and other goals.
We've got SARAC, we've got NACOSAR, we've got ministers' round tables, we've got COSEWIC, and we've got an aboriginal traditional knowledge subcommittee of COSEWIC. Those are five processes that I can count. Would it be beneficial for us to have a national government admit that this is not working and that we need to re-examine how we do species at risk and conservation in the country? Would that be helpful to all three intervenors?
Éric, what are your thoughts?